This article fails to provide much actual data, or at least not enough to make a serious analysis.
Of course restaurant owners are going to complain about a wage increase. It will obviously cost them more. What I don't necessarily buy is that it will run them out of business or force them to move. The opportunity cost is far too high for most of these businesses to relocate. They may use this an an excuse to raise prices, but in many if not most cases it is just an excuse to increase profit margins while avoiding blame.
This article even notes that this has not caused any dramatic shift in unemployment, and that Seattle has at least matched the federal unemployment drop. It then goes on to note that somehow this means some kind of worker layoff is still coming and their point is therefore proved.
Overall this article seems to me to be based on thin to no evidence and fails to provide a sound argument, instead relying on "conventional wisdom" and solitary data points that don't necessarily prove their point. The stat about Seattle having less workers per restaurant is without context and as it is a single point does not show any effect of the wage increase itself, only a variance in how Seattle businesses operate.
It will take a much stronger article with far more data for me to believe that the minimum wage increase is in fact having a massive negative effect, and not just a smaller marginal one indistinguishable from the effects of market trends and variables unrelated to the legislation.
This article fails to provide much actual data, or at least not enough to make a serious analysis.
Of course restaurant owners are going to complain about a wage increase. It will obviously cost them more. What I don't necessarily buy is that it will run them out of business or force them to move. The opportunity cost is far too high for most of these businesses to relocate. They may use this an an excuse to raise prices, but in many if not most cases it is just an excuse to increase profit margins while avoiding blame.
This article even notes that this has not caused any dramatic shift in unemployment, and that Seattle has at least matched the federal unemployment drop. It then goes on to note that somehow this means some kind of worker layoff is still coming and their point is therefore proved.
Overall this article seems to me to be based on thin to no evidence and fails to provide a sound argument, instead relying on "conventional wisdom" and solitary data points that don't necessarily prove their point. The stat about Seattle having less workers per restaurant is without context and as it is a single point does not show any effect of the wage increase itself, only a variance in how Seattle businesses operate.
It will take a much stronger article with far more data for me to believe that the minimum wage increase is in fact having a massive negative effect, and not just a smaller marginal one indistinguishable from the effects of market trends and variables unrelated to the legislation.